


If Found, Please Return

by Chibiness87



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s03e17 A Hundred Days, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 18:33:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19068286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibiness87/pseuds/Chibiness87
Summary: She’s always hated the term MIA. MIA just means no one knows where they are. Like loose change down the back of the sofa. Jack O’Neill is not MIA; she knows exactly where he is.





	If Found, Please Return

**If found, please return** , by chibiness87  
**Rating** : K/G  
**Season/spoilers** : Season 3, ep, 100 days  
**Disclaimer** : not mine

 **Summary** : She’s always hated the term MIA. MIA just means no one knows where they are. Like loose change down the back of the sofa. Jack O’Neill is not MIA; she knows exactly where he is.

* * *

 

3 seconds in, the wormhole flickers, before dying completely. It is all she can do to stand at the base of the ramp and stare in horror.

She’s down the ramp, shedding her P90 and pack to the nearest guard as she goes, all but running up the stairs to the control room. Around her, she can feel the gasps and murmurs of the Edoran’s who have suddenly found themselves cut off, but until she knows, until she’s sure, she’s not about to call them anything else.

Because if they are refugees, then so is Colonel O’Neill, and she needs to start thinking up a rescue plan. They don’t leave their people behind.

* * *

 

3 minutes in, she’s in the control room, pulling up everything she can think of.

Data from the gate, video being played back through even as the Evac took place. Hell, even her own readings of the meteor shower; anything she can get her hands on. Logically, she knows gate could have been destroyed with that last hit, and she’s already pulling a list together in her mind of all the allies they have made with ships at their disposal. Surely, after all they have done for the Tok’ra and Tollena they could spare a ship. Or even the Asgard; Thor seems to have taken a liking to her CO; she’s sure they’d help if the gate no longer works.

So when, almost as an afterthought, she orders the gate to be dialled up and they get a connection, it is all she can do not to move and demand they return immediately. She knows, logically, they will have to wait a few days. If nothing else, the ‘fire rain’ was due to last a few more days; there’s no point sending people back into that situation. And if they can dial in, O’Neill should be able to dial out; it’s only a matter of time.

She’s just going to have to be patient.

* * *

 

3 hours in, she’s in the infirmary, Hammond finally bringing out the big guns (Daniel and Teal’c) to pull her away from the monitor she has yet to move from since sitting down in the Lieutenants chair. Despite logically knowing there is nothing else she can do, the infirmary is already overrun with people who, for a while at least, cannot return home. Medical checks need to be carried out, lists complied, and she knows Janet would prefer as few extras to deal with as possible.

And, despite the hard landing on the ramp, she’s not hurt. Her post mission check can wait a while until the hub-bub has died down a bit. And in the meantime she might be able to calculate a better understanding of what they may be faced with when they eventually return to Edora.

* * *

 

3 days in, they finally send a MALP, and watch in horror as the signal dies almost as quickly as it was there.

On the third day, USAF Colonel Jack O’Neill is finally declared MIA.

It’s Daniel who finds her. Not that she’s been hard to find, recently. Pouring over every finer detail, checking and rechecking the last data they had before she had dived though the wormhole back to Earth.

Ever since the MALP failed in returning more than a moments worth of signal that morning, new maths has taken over her brain. Reports of previous missions lie hap-hazard on her bench; it is the most untidy her workspace has been in months. Years.

If the colonel was here, he’d… but he’s not. Daniel is.

“I take it you’ve heard.”

“Heard what?” The melting point of naquadah is…

“About Jack?”

Maybe if she could… “Hmmm?”

“About the MIA?”

That, finally, gets her attention. Her heart stutters for a moment. “What?”

“Hammond. Apparently it’s standard procedure, or something.”

“He’s not MIA.”

MIA is for… loose change. Or car keys. People who they have no idea where they are. He’s not lost. He’s not missing. She knows exactly where her CO is. And the only thing standing between her and him is (possibly) a sheet of melted naquadah forming an iris over the event horizon. All she needs to do to get to him is remove the iris. Like Sokar did when he…

“Daniel,” she says, determination filling her eyes, “I need to make a call.”

* * *

 

3 weeks in, she has a plan. Well, part of a plan. Maybe 12%, if she’s feeling generous.

She’s mid-way through her by now daily arguments about the laws of physics she’s going against, and a headache is forming. She wishes, not for the first time, to just be left alone enough to work out the maths to prove what she is suggesting isn't impossible. Improbable, maybe, but not impossible.

They have the proof of theory already; they just need to implement it.

She’s tired, and stressed, and if one more scientist comes up to her in the next ten minutes asking a pointless question she’s likely to pick up the nearest weapon and shoot them with it. Her respect for Colonel O’Neill has gone up massively since he’s been stuck off world; his dislike of scientists has never been a secret he’s kept from her, but between her and Daniel he seems to have calmed down.

But maybe it’s just with them; maybe he’s still the same with the rest of the department. Closing the door to her lab, she takes in the masses of paper that have begun to pile up since she’s started this project. The mass of screwed up balls of paper in the corner approaching the bin have increased over time, but she can’t bring herself to throw any of them actually away, because it may be her current projection is wrong, and she’ll have to start again. Or as much as starting again means trawling through the trash to find the next best idea.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing.

The problem with being a genius and saving the world; after a few times they kind of expect it of you. She’s not so sure she can do this.

And then she spots the glass of blue Jell-O, and tears rise to her eyes faster than she can blink them away. She knows it must be one of her team (though she’s not sure who would be more surprising; after all, after the whole Urgo thing, they both know it’s a favourite of hers), but the gesture reminds her so much of a certain brown eyed man it physically hurts to be reminded he’s not here.

He’s not here, he’s there, and he’s relying on her to get him home. And if there is one person on Earth (or not) she refuses to give up on, it’s him.

After all, he would never give up on her.

Janet asks her if it’s a problem, and she wants to laugh in her face. Of course it’s a problem. Her CO is still stuck on a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere. She needs to bring him home.

* * *

 

3 months in, she watches as the proton beam accelerator breaks through the iris-like shield it had formed, and feels her heart jump in her chest. She doesn’t move from the chair, even when Teal’c makes his way into the shimmering puddle, even when the wormhole finally disappears, even when the clock of the agreed redial time reaches zero. She sits still in the chair, watching the familiar sight of the inner ring spinning, knowing she might just about to witness the death of a friend.

What she doesn’t expect to hear is his voice, a light tilt in the end, asking them what took them so long.

The past three months finally catch up with her at that, and it is all she can do to not collapse as she makes her way to the quarters Janet had insisted upon her after she had passed out from exhaustion four weeks ago.

He’s there; he’s alive, and everything is going to be okay.

It takes them another few days to finally be able to erect the Gate again fully, and the she’s stepping through back onto a planet they thought lost, meeting a person the rest of the world thought lost (but not her; he is not a TV remote or car keys or loose change), and watching as he turns away from her and into the arms of another.

Right then, she vows she will never react to him going missing like this again.

* * *

 

(3 years in, she will fail, but that’s a story for another day.)

* * *

End

Thoughts?

 


End file.
